Sheffield Quakers

Friday, 3 March 2017

This is Tim Herrick's 'Inner Quest' talk at Sheffield Central Meeting in January.

My themes today are Quaker work, and Quaker play; and the
personal examples I will explore are my paid employment at the University, and
my family life with Jayne and Isaac.
These are both areas of work - teaching as paid work, and the effort
that goes into constructing a functional, let alone happy, family life - and
play - doing fun things with lively people, whether in the walls of the
University or at home. I present them
here as examples of playing and working, and want to explore how my Quaker
identity - the things I try to be, do, and say - underpins them both. They may not speak to you as examples, which
is entirely fine; and I hope here to start a conversation about work and play
where your own stories can be told.

One reason for thinking about working and playing in a
Quaker way is that in both of the main activities of my life - teaching, and
being a husband and father - I am frequently required to improvise. Neither area is definite, fixed, or certain;
a student’s question might take a class off in an entirely different direction;
Isaac might decide today is the day he wants to jump in puddles rather than
walk to the cornershop. I need to be
able to respond no matter what, and address the emerging needs of others as
well as myself. In the necessary absence of definite things to do next, it’s
useful to have a bigger sense of what I would like to happen - the shape of an
outcome, not a clear picture. So as a
parent and a teacher I am regularly confronted by new situations where I don’t
know what to do, and my Quaker faith and practice helps in several ways. Firstly, it reminds me that I’m not alone in
carrying my troubles, nor am I the first to feel lost among life’s way. Secondly, it offers a still point of deeper
belief by which to orientate myself.
Thirdly, it offers wisdom, experience, and a sense of loving care. And lastly, for me, it encourages playfulness
and experimentation - those two words, “Live adventurously”, resonated deep
within me when I first came into contact with Quakers. So even when hard at work, I try to retain a
light sense of playfulness; and when playing, an awareness of the heavier
burdens that play might be carrying.

As a Quaker and a teacher, there is a rich point of
inspiration in the work, thought, and writing of Parker Palmer. His book, The
Courage to Teach, is one of my favourite about the slippery business of
learning and teaching, and I am lucky enough to be in a position to recommend
it to others. In this book, he talks
about teachers reconnecting with their heart,
the emotional drive to make the world even a tiny degree better, that is likely
to have pulled them into teaching in the first place. He also emphasises the importance of
wholeness in a teacher’s life - sustained by community, and interactions with
loved ones, but ultimately, a version of yourself that is the same showboating
in front of 200 students on Thursday afternoon, as it is sitting silently in
Meeting on Sunday morning. The integrity
developed here - and reinforced above all by the discipline of a Meeting for
Worship - comes across to learners, and enables them to feel supported and
secure in turn. It also helps with the
vision of teaching to which I hold, the primary component of which being listening; listening to the learners, to
the materials that we share, and to myself seeking a deep sense of what feels
right. The integrity that Parker Palmer
emphasises holds me still in this act of careful, tender listening; my heart an
anchor keeping me tethered to the needs of others.

My work, and the work of any teacher, is also grounded in
hope: a belief that people can and will change, and become better through
engagement with the world outside their heads.
A passage from Quaker Faith and
Practice pinned in my office reads:

To pray about any day’s work does
not mean to ask success in it. It means, first to realise my own inability to
do even a familiar job, as it truly should be done, unless I am in touch with
eternity, unless I do it ‘unto God’, unless I have the Father with me. It means
to see ‘my’ work as part of a whole, to see ‘myself’ as not mattering much, but
my faith, the energy, will and striving, which I put into the work, as
mattering a great deal. My faith is the point in me at which God comes into my
work; through faith the work is given dignity and value. And if, through some
weakness of mine, or fault of others, or just ‘unavoidable circumstances’, the
work seems a failure, yet prayer is not wasted when it is unanswered, any more
than love is wasted when it is unreturned.

(QFP, 20.08)

This passage speaks to me because of the balance it finds:
my work, and my self, do not matter much by themselves, but the things I put
into the work, and the energy that I channel through it, matter a great
deal. This, for me, encapsulates
something critical about the work of teaching, which is using yourself as a
bridge to enable the understanding of others.
If it’s only you as the bridge, then within no time it will be fractured
and adrift. But if it’s you, and your
faith, and the spirit that moves through the Meeting - then it can withstand
almost any amount of pressure. Instead
of a rigid iron bridge, it becomes something light and, flexible, responsive to
the dance of the wind and the pressures of travelling feet. This not only helps it last for much longer,
it also makes it a more pleasurable experience to travel over; and, just as
trying to present your wholeness and integrity can help learners find their own
still small voice, it can demonstrate that to enable others to learn, all you
need is a little flexibility.

The other area I am exploring in this talk is family life,
and the pleasures and perils this offers.
I feel I can do this here, in the room where Jayne and I were married
and where Isaac first visited when he was six days old, amongst friends, with
large and small Fs alike. One of the
many delights of spending time with Isaac is the development of little games
and activities where we each have certain parts to play and variation, within
strict limits, is encouraged. The term
that fits them best is “routines” - following the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
this seeks to capture both their rule-bound nature, and their comedic
intent. An example may help. After bath, either Jayne and I will sit with
a towel-wrapped Isaac, and play “The clapping game”. This is essentially a game of imitation with
Isaac leading - clapping might have been the initial action, but now, when he
puffs out his cheeks, we puff out ours; if he shakes his head from side to
side, we follow suit; and if, as he is wont, he shouts “PIRATES!”, then we are
obliged to do the same. The core intent,
it seems to me, of the clapping game and related routines, is for Isaac to be sure that we are listening to him and
responding in ways that he appreciates. Quaker Faith and Practice 22.62 might
help us take this further:

There is little question that if
as a parent we have not taken the time really to listen to children when they
are young, listened not only to their words but to their feelings behind the
words, they are unlikely to want to come with their sharings in later life.

Sometimes, Isaac is so keen on us listening, he will compel
us - placing his favourite snuggly, Baa Lamb, over mine or Jayne’s mouth, he
will repeatedly ask “Can you talk?” The
appropriate response here is a combination of expressive eyebrow movements and
“Mmm mmm”, until Isaac chooses to remove the gag and carry on with a two-way
conversation. But most other times he is
very happy to listen to us, and us to him, without the need for
compulsion. He will recite and act
convoluted stories that put the myths of Babylon to shame, as the dolls from
his dolls house fly to the moon, get trapped in a tunnel, or go for days out
(with plenty of telling each other to “hurry up”). Listening to these is a pure pleasure as we
enter into his imaginative world, laying aside adult cares and taking time to
be still. As the passage quoted earlier
from Quaker Faith and Practice goes
on, “Learning to listen to each other in families can help to make us better
listeners to others and to the Inner Guide”.

Another routine Isaac has developed is called “Scary
monsters”, and it comes from a dark place.
It was developed after two very raw arguments between Isaac and I, when
hurt, frustration, and anger were what we shared as we were locked in
combat. The details of these arguments
matter so little I can’t recall them; but they both pulled hard at the threads
of our love, and I am (amongst other things) enormously proud of Isaac for
having the resilience to find his own way to handle conflict. “Scary monsters” involves putting your face
very close to your partner’s, almost nose to nose; and shouting, loudly, and at
length. Turns are taken, at least
initially, and it ends with a hug, or a wrestle that is also a hug. A passage from Quaker Faith and Practice perhaps helps explain “Scary monsters”,
and the work that Isaac has realised it does.
The passage reads:

I have heard some Friends deny
their anger in a silent ‘peace’ where there is no understanding of each other.
Such Friends are angry but by their silence the progress of world peace has
stood still. If we are angry we know how wars develop. It does not matter who’s
wrong. What matters is that we care enough to talk to each other.

How do we become reconciled to
each other if we are asunder? All I can say is to go up to that person and say
what is in your heart; that their ways are hurting but you still love them. But
this takes time and not many people like to look in a person’s face and find
out who they are. So we miss the reconciliation and do not have the experience
– that we cared. Given that, then we
will know who we are and find relief in tears we all should share. This is
where peace starts.

(QFP 20.68)

As a family, we do many things. We argue, and we care. We make each other laugh, and we make each
other cry. We play, and we work with, on,
and for each other. An image I sometimes
have in mind is Jayne, Isaac, and I as enmeshed cogs within a machine, each of
us supporting each other by turns; but also sometimes catching on each other,
and wearing each other away. The outcome
is that we fit together very well, but perhaps slightly less well with other
people, other parts of the machine. This
is one reason why Meeting is so important; it offers surrounding parts that
support and work with what we’re doing, while also offering differences and
things that we can imitate. Within the larger family of the Meeting, our little
family can be grown with love, as we continue to work and play together.

●How does your Quaker identity come out in the work you
do for love, and/or the work you do for pay?

●Where, for you, does playfulness meet Quaker-ness?

In the discussion that
followed, the ideas outlined here were given much more richness and depth by
the contributions of others. The point
was beautifully made that as adults, we all have experiences of being children,
and these experiences will be shaped by our families and other immediate
influences. Our memories and experiences
are not all going to be happy, which means that there are likely to be hurts we
are carrying around; these may come out when confronted with other people’s,
including children’s, hurts. We also
discussed how adults have forms of play - routines of their own - which give
them opportunities for creativity and joy, from sport to drama and the
wonderful-sounding “silliness therapy”.
Lastly, there was a good discussion of some of the differences between parenting
and grandparenting - which could perhaps provide the starting-point for another
Inner Quest in future.

Wednesday, 28 December 2016

In January 1932, the Quaker philosopher John Macmurray broadcast a series of talks on the BBC. What would become known as the Great Depression was biting hard and unemployment and poverty were on the rise, whilst in Europe Mussolini was in power in Italy and Adolf Hitler would grab power in Germany in the next few months.

Transcripts of these talks and earlier broadcast talks were later published as 'Freedom In The Modern World'.

This is how he concluded his final talk:

Why can we not act
greatly for the solution of our international economic problems? Why
do we simply watch our social system going to pieces before our eyes?
Why are we paralysed? Because we are afraid, afraid of one another,
afraid of ourselves, afraid of the consequences of any decisive
action. We are fear-determined, and our one demand is the
fear-demand, the demand for security, for protection. Our dilemma
lies in the fact that the more we try to defend ourselves the more we
destroy ourselves by isolating our selves more and more from one
another. You have noticed, have you not, that our efforts to solve a
confessedly international problem only seem to increase nationalism?
That is because it is fear that is the motive force of our efforts to
solve the problem. There is only one way in which we can escape from
the dilemma, and that is by destroying the fear that is at the root
of it.

...

I do not think that
Christianity will save us from the things we are afraid of. I think
it would save us from the fear of them which paralyses us. … Real
Christianity stands to-day, as it has always stood, for life against
death, for spontaneity against formalism, for the spirit of adventure
against the spirit of security, for faith against fear, for the
living colourful multiplicity of difference against the monotony of
the mechanical, whether it be the mechanization of the mind, which is
dogmatism, or the mechanization of the emotions, which is conformity.

...

What are we to do
about it? ... how does one begin to grow faith? How does one set
about developing freedom of feeling, and rid oneself of fear? … It
is you and I who are afraid, … Whatever we do will be wrong till
we are put right. If we start trying to set our feelings free we will
just be making the dilemma worse; because we shall use our intellects
to force ourselves to feel and to act from feeling, and the whole
action will be a sham. It would only express what we think we feel,
or what we think we ought to feel; and our last state would be worse
than the first. We should turn our fear of feeling into a fear of not
feeling, our fear of spontaneity into a fear of not being
spontaneous. Reverse your fear, change its object, and it is still
fear. We are in a vicious circle. Until we are healed we cannot act
healthily.

...

What we have to do
is to wait and be quiet; to stop our feverish efforts to do
something; to cease our fruitless attempt to save ourselves.
Salvation, if it comes to us, must come from outside. We must wait
for the new thing to be born in us; for the new light to be
manifested to us. Even to look is useless, for our eyes are blinded.
We can only be quiet and wait, expectant but unworried, for the
creative word that will say, ‘Let there be light.’ There is
nothing else to be done. The next word is not with us, but with
reality.

…

'Be quiet, be
still–the world is not resting on our shoulders; if it were, heaven
help it! If we are so futile and stupid, why should we be saved? And
if our civilization is sham, what point is there in its preservation?
Drop this stupid struggle against the reality of things; there cannot
be anything real to be afraid of.’ For we all know by this time
that what we want is a new and better social order, which will be
built and enjoyed by better men and women than we are; and obviously,
if we are to have a new world we must let the old one go. Even if it
is like death to turn our backs upon it, to stand still and see all
our defences crumble and our security vanish like smoke, … that ‘he
that loseth his life shall keep it’. It is possible for [persons]
and for societies of [persons] to be reborn, even if it is impossible
to have them reconstructed.

Wednesday, 19 October 2016

As a Meeting, we discerned in June 2016 that it was the right time to embark as a whole meeting on a review of our experience of our Meetings for Worship; we want to listen deeply to one another and enrich our lives as a worshipping community.

We hope that all the many and different existing groups and committees will make a space to reflect together. And there will be lots of other opportunities to meet individually or in different groups to deepen our spiritual lives together; for more details, please look on the review noticeboard or ask an overseer.

Questions to use to talk, listen and reflect….

What is my experience of meeting for worship?

What do we value in our meetings for worship?

Sometimes I feel helped by meeting for worship and sometimes I don’t. What makes the difference?

What (one thing) would make a really helpful difference to my experience of meeting for worship?

What keeps me coming to meeting for worship and what prevents me?

We suggest, whenever and however Friends are meeting to reflect together, that we all…

Spend time together in silent worship.

Take unhurried time to reflect together using the questions/ conversation starters above.

Write a minute or find another way of sharing your responses to these questions….a painting? a poem? a blog post? There will be a noticeboard and table in the social space for this purpose and/or you can email spiritualreview.sc@sheffieldquakers.org.uk

We will be exploring creative ways of ensuring we can share together as much as possible.

It would also be helpful to have a list where possible of the names of those who have met so we can ensure as many Friends as possible are included.

The Spiritual Review planning group, on behalf of Sheffield Central Local Quaker Meeting

Wednesday, 27 April 2016

Quakers have been a lead in divesting from fossil fuels. Here is my personal story.

As the pressure is on to be open and transparent about our investments and tax returns, I am coming clean that I decided to invest my modest NHS pension pot, not in an off shore unit trust, but in renewables, run by cooperatives. One of which is Four Winds Energy Coop.
http://www.fourwinds.coop/home.asp

If you don’t want to read any further I highly recommend the video on their website “how coal country can spark a clean energy revolution.”https://vimeo.com/121124286

I attended the Four winds energy coop AGM on the 19th March in Barnsley which included a site visit to their 500kw turbine on a disused colliery site at Shafton. The coop have two 500kw turbines up and running on old colliery sites. The Shafton turbine pictured here which started generating in July 2015, and the other one at Duckmarton, near Chesterfield, which started generating in December 2014.

Close to, the turbine seems vast. The shaft is 70 meters tall. All we could hear was a gentle purr. We were shown inside by the members of the board who were very experienced retired people, who had been working in a voluntary capacity for several years to get this to happen. One, a retired electrical engineer, told us the turbine was bought and imported from the Netherlands. He told us at the beginning of his working life there were 6 factories in the UK manufacturing turbines, now there are none. The picture on the right is the computer control screen from inside the turbine. It was really impressive to see how the blades alter their pitch and direction in response to wind speed and direction. The turbine has been generating electricity for nine months and generated one million kw hours, roughly enough electricity for 500 households. Looking 360 degrees from the turbine we could see the communities of Grimesthorpe, Cudworth and Shafton...in our view about 500 houses. However, in the UK you can’t sell electricity directly to your local community, like you can in Germany, so this electricity is sold to the grid with remuneration through the Feed in Tariff(FITs). Instead the agm decided that in future years 5% of any dividend should go to a community fund and if possible, one that addresses fuel poverty. The Duckmanton turbine started generating in December 2014 and they have a community fund up and running, working with the local primary school who want to fit solar panels on their roof.

The AGM itself was both inspiring and depressing. The accounts indicated the coop paid for the secretariat services of the parent energy renewable coop, Energy 4 All, which amounted to one part time job and salary. The directors received no fees, just modest travel expenses. (Rather different from any bank or building society!)The deeply depressing information was that the coop had plans for 6 further turbines all on disused colliery sites in Yorkshire, but these are no longer viable due to the governments changes in policy..viz:making planning permission much harder, massively reducing the FITs, and stopping tax incentives for investing in renewables.

I think this example of Four Winds coop shows what can be done, and at the same time exposes the total hypocrisy and deceit of our government. David Cameron signed the climate Change agreement in Paris last December to commit to massively reducing our fossil fuel emissions and build up our renewables, and also declares he wants to encourage local enterprise and initiatives. With policies that cramp initiatives such as the Four Winds coop what is going on? Can we hold him to account?

But above all I am filled with gratitude for those men and women who put their all into making these turbines whirr.

If anyone is interested to look into investment in community renewables I can recommend
Triados renewables, now called Thrive renewables. https://www.triodosrenewables.co.uk/en/home/
and Energy 4 All http://energy4all.co.uk/

Monday, 25 January 2016

Recently I attended, for the second time, the Sunday service of a Sheffield Apostolic Church that has emerged from within the Slovakian Roma community. It has been brought from Slovakia and holds services on Sunday afternoons in Sheffield. It takes place entirely in Romany. The service lasts over 2 1/2 hours and is made up of quite a long period of singing followed by a long and impassioned sermon and then some more songs and ending with a prayer. I was the only non-Roma person in attendance and I stayed towards the back of the congregation (about a hundred adults and twenty or thirty children).

What struck me was the facility we have for finding silence and space for contemplation amongst noise. I sat there at the back and I suppose for a time the service became a sort of white noise within which I bore witness briefly and silently to the Quaker tradition.